The Longest Field Goal Ever Kicked: A Parable of 66 Yards and the Global Attention Span By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (tired, over-caffeinated, and still jet-lagged from Doha) On 26 September 2021, in the concrete cathedral formerly known as Mile High Stadium, a 26-year-old Baltimore place-kicker named Justin Tucker swung his leg like Zeus flipping…
Jerry Jones: The Last American Monarch in a League of His Own By Our Man in Row Z, International Affairs Desk The name “Jerry Jones” doesn’t translate into Mandarin or Swahili, yet from Lagos sports bars to Seoul betting apps, everyone knows the silhouette: the silver pompadour rising from a luxury box like a weather…
PARIS—Somewhere between the Avenue Montaigne and a Malibu rehab facility, the name Brooke Mueller keeps ricocheting across the planet like a designer boomerang that refuses to come down. To most of the world she is simply “that woman who married the tiger-blooded warlock,” a footnote in the Charlie Sheen global meltdown franchise. Yet from Berlin…
The planet’s most pressing geopolitical question this fine afternoon is not whether the BRICS summit will topple the dollar, nor if the Houthis have added another shipping lane to their maritime scrapbook, but rather: Is Taylor Swift presently breathing the same recycled Arrowhead Stadium air as a man whose primary talent is throwing an inflated…
Mets Score: The Trivial Number That Launched a Thousand Hot Takes and Proved the World Still Cares (Barely) By the time the final digit flickered across scoreboards from Flushing to Frankfurt, the Mets had done something remarkable: they lost 7-3, and yet the planet’s collective cortisol spiked as if the Dow had just belly-flopped. In…
Alvin Kamara and the Global Gladiator Economy by Our Correspondent in the Departures Lounge, CDG The first thing you notice about Alvin Kamara—once you get past the diamond dental grill that could refinance a small nation’s sovereign debt—is that he travels with the serene confidence of a man who has monetized every twitch of his…
The Earth tilts on its axis, oceans rise and fall, currencies collapse and re-inflate like cheap balloons, and yet somewhere a 34-year-old man-child from upstate New York is still spiking a synthetic leather football into the turf as though it personally insulted his mother. To the rest of the planet—where fútbol is a religion, rugby…
Atlético Mineiro vs Santos: A Dystopian Ballet in Black and White, Sponsored by Crypto RIO DE JANEIRO—As the planet queues politely for the next cataclysm—be it heat domes, supply-chain famines, or a new season of “The Crown”—Brazil has decided the most pressing matter is still twenty-two millionaires hoofing a ball under LED suns. Atlético Mineiro…
Ricky Pearsall and the Global Theatre of a Single Gunshot By Matteo “Grimly Amused” Rossi, International Desk, Dave’s Locker SAN FRANCISCO—Somewhere between the sourdough tourists and the algorithmic fog, a 23-year-old wide receiver named Ricky Pearsall took a bullet to the chest on a Saturday afternoon. The shot was allegedly fired by a 17-year-old who,…
Milan vs Bologna: A Derby of Desperation in the Age of Global Collateral Damage By Our Man in the Mezzogiorno, still coughing up neoliberal dust MILAN—At first glance, tonight’s Serie A fixture between Milan and Bologna is merely the 156th official meeting of two clubs whose combined trophy cabinets could house a modest oligarch’s ego….
Rome, Italy – At 3 a.m. local time, while the Eternal City’s pigeons slept off another day of aggressive carb-loading, a small band of insomniac Europeans huddled around laptops tuned to a grainy stream of the Arizona Cardinals versus the Seattle Seahawks. The broadcast was in English, the commercials were for pickup trucks unavailable on…
The NFL App: America’s Pocket-Sized Colosseum Goes Global By [Name Redacted for Legal Reasons], Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Atlantic Somewhere between the Indian Ocean and the Arctic Circle, a Berlin commuter streams the third quarter of Chiefs-Bills on a U-Bahn whose Wi-Fi was last upgraded during the Weimar Republic. In Lagos, a data reseller…
